Language and Public Decorum

by Daren Jonescu
·
Published December 13, 2018
· Updated December 13, 2018

FromRight Scoop, I learn that something called “Mika Brzezinski,” ranting progressively about whatever on MSNBC, has offended one or another of her ideological kin by allegedly committing an act of something called “homophobia,” one of the progressive left’s ever-expanding lexicon of labels for nonexistent evils, or more specifically in this case, thought crimes.

It was while speaking diatribifically about, I suppose, the Trump administration’s non-response to the murder of “journalist” and newly-ascended Time Magazine Savior of the Year Jamal Khashoggi, that Mika B. stepped into the leftist language minefield. (Pardon my quotation of her smutty language, but in this case it is necessary to make my point.)

“I understand that Donald Trump doesn’t care,” Brzezinski said. “He doesn’t care. But why doesn’t Mike Pompeo care right now? Are the pathetic deflections that we just heard when he appeared on Fox & Friends — is that a patriot speaking? Or a wannabe dictator’s butt boy?”

That last phrase, needless to say, raise the hackles of all the politically correct police out there, as they attacked her choice of such a “homophobic” expression, demanding an apology to their poor triggered feelings, which, needless to say, she promptly provided.

I emphasize that what she apologized for was offending phony identity group sensitivities, not speaking about her nation’s secretary of state in language for which children in the school yard used to have their mouths washed out with soap.

That is, I agree that what she said was disgusting, but not for politically correct reasons.

First of all, the idea that her words were “homophobic” is ridiculous. If she had said “Pompeo is prostituting himself for the Saudis,” would that have been a “heterophobic” slur? No. She was trying, with extreme inarticulateness and a deliberate flaunting of her lack of modesty, to criticize Pompeo by suggesting he was playing a submissive or subservient role for the Saudis.

On its face, her point was neither pro- nor anti-homosexual. She was criticizing his attitude, and, lacking the linguistic skills or decorum to use heightened but non-grotesque language, she adhered to current rhetorical custom in this Age of Trump and descended straight into the gutter. And since both Pompeo and Prince Salamander of Madame Too-Saud’s House of Whacks are men, she instinctively chose homosexual imagery. Had Mike Pompeo been, say, Mika Pompeo, then she would presumably have chosen a heterosexual image. Her remark was no more “homophobic” than criticizing Barack Obama’s policies is “racist.”

But what is disgusting is that a morning television show, a show for alleged adults, but many of whom will be people with young children, should allow, or even encourage, its hosts to use language that no one would have thought appropriate for daytime television even ten years ago. The endless, casual use (and public acceptance) of crude sexual references — the cruder the better! — is a coalmine canary, testing the level of vulgarization to which modern “culture” has been dragged by generations of progressive education and neo-Marxist propaganda.

No one is expected to show any decorum, or any respect for the dignity or privacy of anyone else. Public entertainers, even talking about the news during a morning “family hour,” regularly use analogies or personal criticisms based on crude vocabulary for describing sexual acts, bodily functions, and the like, and nobody even blinks anymore. A former first lady uses vulgar street slang while talking to an audience about the lives of working women (“that sh– doesn’t work all the time”), and the audience laps it up.

“Homophobia” my foot! Mika, her wee audience, and the bulk of modern society, are mired in modestiphobia, decenciphobia, and respectophobia. Ironically, the endless pushing of “sexual identity” on school children, including propagandizing them with pseudo-concepts like “homophobia,” is one of the causes of these latter cultural diseases.